


Motherfurreaking Purrfect

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Demonstuck [51]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: (they kill the pedophile), Demonstuck, Gen, Murder, liv is used as bait but she's in no real danger at any time, mention of pedophila, worrisomely dangerous kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-13 12:41:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19251412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: The younger set of Striders notice a creep paying them a little too much attention at the mall. Now, technically they should probably inform an adult, but really--could an adult handle it this efficiently?





	1. Chapter 1

Jr notices the fucker before you do, which is...a lil' bit unacceptable. Like yeah, sure, they're older than you are by virtue of the twisted branches of the Strider family tree that everyone at the mall-cafeteria table fell from, but _you_ are the most dangerous here, the most capable even if you look like a preteen with hair dyed clashing colors and a band shirt that you stole from Hal and tied into a crop top to go with the neon pink capris D bought for you when you announced you were _hot_ and didn't want to wear a skirt. You know you look like a baby furry—and you are! the cat ears ain't just cutesy, you're a motherfureaking bonafide hybrid and if anyone looked _really_ close they'd see that the headband nestled in your curls doesn't actually connect—but you are _also_ something more. 

You're a monster, a special one. Something designed to fight and kill. 

Which is why it's fucked up that you only realize the real and present danger when you notice Jr signing to Davesprite. Once you notice, though, you see that Liv and Seb are watching their sibling's hands just as closely; _everyone_ managed to get clued in before you noticed something was fucky. 

Shit. It's the mint latte, isn't it. Mint is too closely related to _nepeta cataria_ , to catnip—hell, it's also known as cat _mint_ , isn't it? It's not as strong as the baggies of dried herb that the rest of your family takes turns bringing home from the pet store, but you're calmer than you usually would be, relaxed, off your furreaking _game._

Eh, this isn't a combat situation. You're allowed to have that lil' taste of mint-flavored normalcy, even if it means that someone else spots the problem first. 

What is the problem, anyway? 

Jr's faintly luminous red eyes keep flicking to a certain spot, another table somewhere behind you. Turning to look would tip off whoever they're focused on; instead, you pull the straw out of your drink, drain the last quarter of it in one smooth swallow, and get to your feet to take the empty cup to the trash. Nothing to see here, just a kid who's got a lil' more respect for maintainance than some adults here, they just want to save some work for whoever has to gather up the garbage and dispose of it at the end of the day, right? That's all this is. 

The guy's obvious. Maybe not to someone normal or someone human, but to _you_ he has a metaphorical neon sign over his head—if you had to try to read those imaginary, illuminated letters, they'd say something like _I AM WAY TOO INTERESTED IN UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN_. 

Bad news. You get all that from one glance, letting your eyes slide over and past him as you turn back to rejoin your siblings. Maybe if you had your shades down on your face instead of pushed up to sit atop your headband, you'd risk more, but as things are that's the most that you feel like risking. Can't have him catch on, after all. 

Hey, you're a _hunter._ You know how to hunt. 

Davesprite waits for you to sit down before pushing his half-eaten noodles across the table. "Want the rest of mine? Liv changed her mind about sharing halfway through." His hands stay on the table even as you nod and reach for the styrofoam container; with them, he says something much more important. _Jr says he's been following us._

"You put spicy stuff in it and you _know_ I'm not gonna eat that!" Liv protests, her nose wrinkling up. Her hands are on the table too, signing quicker than Davesprite's. _Been watching us! Fucker._ That last she directs at the creep at the other table, her middle finger jabbing at you (and him, past you) before she folds her hand into a fist. 

"Picky, picky." Seb giggles and shoves gently at his sister's shoulder, his hands coming down as he ducks the swat she aims at his head. _Not just us. Other kids too._

Hm. You deliberately suck down too many spicy noodles at once—enough to make yourself choke but just a little, you don't want to risk having _him_ or anyone else come over here in some kind of panic—and use the cover of your own genuine coughing fit to sign a simple question. 

_Boys or girls?_

Davesprite leans over past Jr to thump you on the back; Jr hunches down to be out of the way, twisting towards you a little so you'll be sure to see their hands. _Both. More girls. He watches Liv and me the most._

Seb slides his water across the table to you. _I vote for Liv._

At this point, you kind of _need_ the water, which gives you a second to consider. If that fucker likes little girls, of course he's gonna be the most interested in Liv and Jr, even though the latter isn't actually a girl. You could probably pass for a girl today too, but you have a suspicion that you look a little older than this fucker wants. _Because?_

_She'll talk,_ Jr signs. _I won't._

That's fair. "Liv? Me 'n Davesprite have a couple things to go pick up; you wanna come with us, or go grab a handful of quarters with Jr 'n Seb 'n grab some stuff from the coin machines?" 

"Coin machines." No hesitation. Excellent. Your little sister's one hell of a brave warrior already. 

"Cool; meet you guys by the bathrooms in fifteen?" _We'll follow you wherever he takes you and deal with him there._

Liv gives you a thumb's-up, and the five of you push chairs back and head down the correct halls. 

That bastard follows your younger sibs, not you and Davesprite. You resist the urge to start stalking him yourself—patient hunters are the only ones who can catch their prey, and you really do have a purchase you need to make.

* * *

Seb's main talent is crossing more space in less time than anyone else would suspect possible; you're just coming out of the shop with one purchase in the bag Davesprite's carrying and the other half-fitted onto your hands when he dashes up to the two of you, blue eyes alight with the kind of excitement that means either Big Plans in motion, or ice cream. From the distinct lack of sweet milky goodness, it's got to be the former. 

"How're we doing?" You keep walking while you ask, of course, following Seb as he backpedals spooky-fast back the way he came. "Jr's playing backup for her, right?" 

"Yep!" Seb's nodding in time with the rhythm of his feet, fast enough that your brain's struggling to come up with a song that'd match the beat. "He saw us ditch her, he moved in, Jr said they'd text if shit went sideways but so far everything's fine—" 

"How long?" Davesprite asks, pulling his orange shades back down over his oranger eyes. He sounds perfectly calm, not even a lil' excited; you don't think you can match that tone right now. 

"Ten minutes. Come _on,_ slowpokes!" And with that, Seb spins on his heel and starts in with that speedwalking slowrunning shit that's all you can get away with in the mall without getting stopped and questioned and maybe having your parents called (unacceptable); you follow right on his heels, with Davesprite right beside you.

* * *

The glance you got in the cafeteria was just barely enough for you to get a taste of your prey's lifeforce. Keeping the ethereal smell in the forefront of your mind during the time between _then_ and _now_ is difficult, even for you; things like that are slippery, easy to lose with even a little bit of time or distraction, and you've had plenty of both. If you weren't _you_ , it'd be impossible, but you're motherfureaking _superhuman_ and you have enough of the memory of the scent left to pinpoint exactly which vehicle you need to stake out in the crowded parking lot. 

Davesprite and Seb and Jr are back by the entrance, of course, waiting for whichever adult answered the phone call back to the safehouse to show up and pick them up. You're betting on an ETA of maybe twelve minutes from now, by which time you'll be long gone from the passenger-side footwell in the front seat of this stupid rusty blue truck that smells like awful things.

(You're not even going to think of the kids that left the scents and traces that you can sense. Nope. Not doing it.) 

Your wings want to spread. You will them back under your skin; this space is too damn cramped for that. Your claws want to come out, and you let them even though you can't spare enough concentration to make sure they don't pierce the fabric of your new black gloves. Eh, it's not like you'll be keeping those past the next...eight minutes, anyway...

Ah. Voices, muffled through metal and rolled-up windows. No words that you can pick out, but you still know your sister's voice; she's doing _amazing,_ shaky and sniffly like she's scared out of her mind over losing the kids she's supposed to stick with. You can just imagine big teary eyes under lavender ponytails, the way she's gripping that fucker's hand like she's the one being led to the slaughter. His voice you've never heard before, but you still recognize it—there's a way that adults talk when they think you and your siblings are just kids. Soothing and condescending at the same time, like they can't imagine that you can hear that shit.

You tense up and tighten your grip. When the door opens...

_There._ He's got Liv's hand, of course he does, he wouldn't let her slip away now, but she's smart—she's as far off to the side as she can get, out of your way when you explode out of your hideyhole. Fuck, you'd give a finger to know how he sees you, in this moment—an avenging angel in shades of chartruse and mango? Something out of an anime, complete with shitty fifty-dollar katana that you paid for with an emergency credit card, the kind that doesn't leave records, and Davesprite wiped the clerk's memory of ever having existed? The motherfureaking killing machine you are? 

It is a mystery and will remain one, because his eyes go wide—you see your gleeful sharptoothed smile reflected in his pupils, ringed by blue more faded than Seb's—and then he lets go of Liv's hand and tries to raise his arms in defense and it's too late because you're already on him, blade biting and drawing back and biting twice more before he hits the ground with you on top. There's blood on your face, in your mouth, you can _taste_ him dying already even though he's got another full minute before he'll bleed out, and it's— 

Fucking _purrfect._

* * *

You leave the sword in him, replacing a significant part of his anatomy in the most fitting bit of symbolism you can think of. The gloves were fucking _soaked_ ; you left little red smudges all over the interior of his truck as you searched it after, but the tokens he took from the others—the ones before Liv, the list he meant to add your sister to—you're very careful not to mark, when you take them out and lay them neatly around his head like a halo. 

(You don't count them. That'd hurt too much. You may be a ruthless killing machine, but you're also just a _kid,_ and there's a limit to what you can consider without crying.) 

The gloves go into one of the few trash cans placed in the parking lot itself. They might be found, or they might not; it's not like they can be traced to you. Even without them, it's obvious what you've been doing and if you had to go back into the mall the amount of blood on you might be a problem, but luckily you don't have to, because as you consider the best route between parked cars you hear a horn beep. 

Ooh. That's D's. And when you slide between two almost identical white trucks and out to the aisle, it's the kidhauler minivan that's waiting for you, with one door already open for you to pounce through. 

"Holy _shit_ , Davepeta—" 

"I'm not getting it on the car, don't worry!" Actually, you're already stripping off the ruined shirt as Liv pulls the door shut behind you—shit you have got bloodstains on your sportsbra. Those aren't coming out. "Anybody fill you in yet?" 

"None of y'all even told me there was something to be filled in _about_!" 

"Cool, we can do that on the way home then! Let's go; I need a shower." 

For a moment, D doesn't comply with this (in your opinion) very reasonable request. Then he groans, leans forward to bonk his forehead against the steering wheel (this is why the horn doesn't work; Hal disabled it after the third time Dirk or D attracted unneeded attention through cranial means), straightens back up, and hits the gas. 

Easy peasy. You fucking _rock._


	2. Chapter 2

You _do_ take a shower once you get back to the safehouse, even though you're pretty sure that D isn't anywhere near satisfied with your account of today's adventures. He lets you go without any kind of fuss, though. 

(You knew he would. Of course he would. You have blood all over you because you're too wired to start cat-cleaning yourself while you talk, of _course_ you get a pass.) 

So. Shower time. Almost a Dirk-worthy shower, honestly; the water goes lukewarm after some indeterminant amount of time that's probably way too long since the safehouse doesn't actually _have_ a hot water heater. It's magic, like most things around here. The safehouse, you, your ability to steal pieces of a soon-to-be murdered pedophile's lifeforce...

Oh, yep, the house is one hundred purrcent right. Time to get out of the shower. Better to _not_ have the coming meltdown in here. 

The water shuts itself out as you reach for the handle; the house is _definitely_ paying attention to you. You step out, leaving a wet trail over to the cabinet because you forgot to get a towel out before you got _in_. What of your clothes you were still wearing when you made it to the shower (your shirt's still in the car unless D got it, your shoes are somewhere between here and the front door, your bra is...you're not really sure, but probably at least _kind_ of near your shoes; hopefully someone throws it away so you don't have to deal with it again) but you're _so_ not putting them back on. No more blood. Nope. 

(No more right meow at least.) 

(Fuck.) 

Anyway. You don't have far to go wearing your improvised toga, because when you open the bathroom door your room is on the other side. Just _thinking_ thank you to the safehouse for that lil' bit of spacebending isn't enough; you actually murmur it out loud as you drop the towel and start digging through the neatly folded piles of clothes that you flatly refuse to put in drawers and don't have room for in the closet. Thankfully, the plain blue shirt (John's) and fractal-patterened shorts (a gift from Hal) that you want are close to the top of the pile, because you don't have the energy to dig very far. 

You have the energy to put them on, though, and to toss the towel onto the chair where you keep the clothes that you need to haul downstairs and wash. Then you're pretty much done; if you were normal enough to have a bed, you'd probably fall on it and pass out for a couple hours. 

You are not normal. You do not have a bed. 

You do, however, have a closet with a mattress and some number of blankets and a greater number of pillows, and you walk over to that and just let yourself collapse, ending up tangled up in three separate blankets and curled around a pillow shaped like a ladybug. It's much softer than a ladybug, though, which is nice. It's nice. 

Nothing else is nice. Nothing is nice and your chest hurts and oh _fuck_ he's still in your mouth, his taste's in your head—not the taste of his life, no, not the sick scent you picked up in the mall cafeteria but the other taste, the nice one. Killing him tasted nice, didn't it? It was fun, wasn't it? Taking lives, that's _always_ fun, because that's what you're built for. 

You're a weapon. You're made to kill, it's what you _do_. 

Which is fine. You're a weapon, yeah, but you're also the hand that wields it, the brain behind it all, you're the one who chooses how you're used. This was a—can you say a good reason to kill? No, you can't say that, that doesn't exist, you don't think that exists...but it was a _justified_ one. 

You were saving people. 

Right?

The taste of the traces of death left on all the sad tokens you arranged around the killer's body rises in your throat like bile. You didn't save _anyone_. 

Great, now your chest hurts and also you can't breathe. Those two things may or may not be related, but now is not a moment when you can contemplate cause and effect. Right now you— 

The knock at the door is something you probably would have expected, had you been paying attention. You know who it is without even pulling your head out from under the layers of blankets currently wrapped around it (purrobably not safe, now that you think about it, but oh well) and the house must know that Dave's exactly the person you need right now, because you hear the door open and shut and a minute later he's gently moving pillows to make himself a spot in your nest next to you. 

He doesn't touch the ladybug pillow you're hugging, though, and he doesn't mess with the blankets around your face. At this point you think everyone knows that, under certain circumstances, touching you will almost certainly lead to stitches. 

Dave's warm. A couple seconds, and you've squirmed over to drape yourself across his lap, face-down with your wings draped over literally everything. You can almost feel him trying to wiggle into the cracks of your natural mental defenses; the way he's stroking your feathers helps. 

A little. 

Not enough, though, because eventually Dave exhales like he's been holding his breath and takes option B: actually talking to you without empathic insights. "D said some fucked-up shit went down?" 

"Mmnn." That's not an answer. That's not even a _word._ You're pretty sure that the way your tail starts lashing answers him pretty well, though. 

And he knows how to read it. You feel his hand pause for a moment, then slide up to scratch the bases of your ears, right in that sweet spot. "That bad?" 

"...mhm." Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Your body's trying to relax and your mind's still tense as a guitar string that's about to snap the instrument it's attached to in half, your wings are trying to spread further than the walls allow and your ears would be pressed flat if Dave wasn't petting them and your tail is still whipping back and forth like a snake being beaten to death by a mongoose and— 

Okay, yeah, no, this is an inherently unstable situation, and it's already lasted longer than could be reasonably expected. You actually make it three whole seconds more, too; then you furreaking _explode_ , flipping yourself over in a way that involves mostly core strength instead of arms or legs—which is good, because you need your arms to hook around Dave's neck and your legs to push yourself closer to him. Wait, no, that might be too close, he's gonna end up flat on his back if you keep this up. 

That knowlege does not mean that you can stop. Luckily there is plenty of soft shit under Dave and you weigh maybe one-twenty, so _technically_ you're not crushing him to death. He doesn't even try to shove you off as you bury your face in his shirt, either...although you think you might have spooked him, because suddenly the familiar scent of demon is tickling your nose. 

"Sorry Karkat." Muffled as you are by the faceful of shirt, you're purretty sure he'll—they'll?—understand that. 

"It's okay." Sounds like Dave. The hand in your hair feels like Dave—Karkat's a touch more cautious about touching you to comfort, like he's more aware of what you could do at any given moment. "You're okay. I got you." 

Right, because there is conceivably something that _Dave_ could protect _you_ from. That's like, really laughable. But you're not laughing. Actually you might be crying. It's hard to tell with your face smooshed up against Dave's chest. Still, you think you're gonna just stay here for a minute. 

Actually you're definitely crying. Dave's shirt is wet already. It's going to be kind of gross in a minute. 

Maybe you can worry about that later. Like when you stop sobbing, which you apparently started at some point? Wow, you don't sound human at all when you get crying. Like you _aren't_ human but usually you don't sound quite _this_ much like...like what? A crow? A crow that's had their feathers pulled off and replaced with fur, sharp teeth in your beak, halfway taught to speak like a human...okay you should stop. Stop thinking, not crying. You don't actually know how to stop that second one. 

Hey, you're actually not crying anymore. Or at least not making cracked meowing cawing sounds. It's an improvement, even if your face is still leaking a little bit. 

The sensation of Dave stroking your ears kinda blended into the background for the last minute or so; you're vaguely surprised when you raise your head and he's still lying there underneath you. Your mind must be more open than usual, because you see his eyes widen as your surprise hits him, the way his eyes flicker pure Karkat-red. 

They're back to human by the time you wiggle up enough to bump your forehead against his chin, though. "Thanks." 

"Hey, what are bros for?" The point of this gesture is not to get Dave to kiss the very top of your head. He does it anyway. It's nice. "Going by what I'm picking out of your head, D was _definitely_ wrong about how fucked up your day was, though." 

"Eh. He didn't know." 

"Ah." 

"You gonna tell him?" 

"That you had a meltdown? Yeah, if he asks." Dave shrugs, dislodging you from your spot under his chin and making you slide back down to end up flat on his chest again. " _You're_ gonna talk to Rose later, right?" 

"Ohhh yeah." Rose usually has no idea what to do with you; your unique blend of Dave, Davesprite, Nepeta, and failed HDB programming tends to sabotauge any attempt at traditional psychology before it even starts. Still, talking it out helps most things, and Rose can usually come up with answers to most of whatever's left. "But like, way later." 

"That's fair." 

"I'm gonna fall asleep on you." 

He laughs. Another nice sound. "Also fair. I'll be here when you wake up." 

That is _purrecisely_ what you need to hear. With that reassurance, you can close your eyes and more-or-less instantly check out of consciousness and into blurry, comfortable sleep.


End file.
